A dear friend signaled to me that she would’ve liked to hear more in my last post re: my stance on bodies and real selves. I was having a terrible time articulating it yesterday, but here we go.

What set me off yesterday is a recent spate of people on facebook posting things suggesting that we should love women for their real selves, not their bodies. The problem that I come to is this: I have a hard time making a distinction between the body I inhabit and the person that I am. They are not discrete entities, and to suggest that my body is somehow different from my real self also suggests that my body is impermanent, and my thoughts/personality are set in stone. I am changeable, as is my body. Over time, I can lose weight, gain weight, lose functionality, increase/decrease in dexterousness &c. I will age, I will change. Likewise, I will change over time with respect to my personality and ways of thinking. It would be very Foreverware, and kind of disturbing if I didn’t. When I decided to marry Quin, one of the things that impacted that decision is our willingness/flexibility to love each other as we change, to discover new things about each other, and to remain in a partnership, always learning new things about one another.

I have plenty of issues with my body (admittedly, I have just as many, if not more, hangups about my mental state/personality). For example, I am fat. I know I am fat. It bothers me when people suggest that I’m not fat, because I have eyes and mirrors. I have hangups about my fatness that come into play regularly. Quin loves me, not in spite of my fatness, nor because of it (that goes into its own weird territory, in my experience). He just appreciates me, my thoughts, my personality, and my body, for all things I can do, or that we can do together, regardless of how that changes in the future. My body is integrated into my real self, as changeable as everything else about me.